Sig Christenson: Passing time, Part 2

It was well after 2 a.m. Saturday, April 21, and a group of soldiers and two journalists were waiting for a helicopter ride out of Forward Operating Base Normandy. The stars twinkled brightly in the chilly air, and the landing zone was quiet except for an Army scout holding forth on the future of Iraq.

He wasn’t sure if the fledgling Iraqi army was ready to take over parts of the region and work on its own by June 1. That’s a big issue. The Iraqis almost certainly aren’t ready, but they have a much bigger problem than just receiving proper equipment and training.

They don’t seem to share America’s sense of urgency in fighting this war.

“If we elect a new president and he pulls us out, we’ll be back,” a soldier, who is in Army aviation, said after sitting next to us on the desert floor.

“It may be a matter of time,” the scout said. “One year, two years, 10 years. We’ll be back.”

Like the scout, the soldier in aviation didn’t give me his name as I took notes by a small flashlight. He said he was on his fourth deployment to the region, three of which have been in Iraq, and was divorced with three children somewhere in America.

One thing he said struck me as rather odd.

“I’d rather be fighting this war here than in the States,” he said. “Here I know my family is safe and I’m keeping (terrorists) from coming to the States.”

This was a first for me in five tours of the war zone. No soldier has ever claimed to prefer risking it all in Iraq to enjoying the good life back home.

He mentioned wanting to serve in Iraq to prevent terrorists from mortaring his kids’ home. That seemed a bit of a stretch. Insurgents have been perfectly content to mortar and rocket the Green Zone, but Baghdad is in their back yard. They’d need quite a magic carpet to get all the way to say, Homerville, Ga., to lob 88s on Main Street.

Then the soldier from aviation indulged himself in a predictable attack on the mainstream media, his views reflecting a wide swath of thinking among the more conservative GIs in and out of Iraq.

I closed the notebook, took a deep breath and looked at the stars. Getting home, back to treasured friends and family, took on a greater sense of importance at this hour.

Where was that damned helicopter?

There were supposed to be two of them – big dual-rotor Chinooks. They were supposed to have room for something like 18 of us, but I had done my homework on the matter and knew we might get bumped. This night they would stop at 10 or so landing zones before visiting Normandy. Two days of bad weather meant a lot of soldiers trying to get rides.

Anyone trying to get out of any base in Iraq can be made to feel like a yo-yo. You figure out the flights and arrange to get on a manifest. At Normandy’s Tactical Operations Center they put up a colorful printout, complete with the kind of helicopters that will be coming here later in the evening, along with the names of those on the manifest.

It goes up on a wall.

Your heart leaps when you see that piece of paper with your name on it. This is hope. Now, in theory, you are guaranteed a flight out because your name is on the manifest.

But the Army doesn’t have to put you on board that helicopter. If it lands at your base with no room in the cabin that bird flies into the night and you’re stuck.

The highlight of your next day will be lunch and dinner at the chow hall.

Some soldiers told me they had been trapped at Logistical Support Area Anaconda in Balad a week. They came to the passenger air terminal each night and waited.

And waited.

Sometime after 3 a.m. the Chinooks landed. They sat on the LZ, rotors whirling, as we huddled 30 yards away, backpacks over our shoulders and ballistic glasses on to keep the sand from being blasted into our eyes. The seconds turned into long minutes.

Finally, we were waved away from those choppers and marched back to Normandy’s TOC, our hearts dropping as the roar of the helicopters faded to a distant hum. The soldier in aviation did a slow burn as he slumped in the couch, another cigarette in hand.

An unprintable word escaped his lips before he exited the building in disgust.

A group of us sat on the couch and floors, waiting for reports of any other flight this night. But there would be no more helicopters, even for the soldiers who were officially manifested and should have gotten out. The “Space A” guys like us would have to wait another two days.